[The E]

Are you saying Bezos hasn't made that maths? The world is huge. Their client base is hundreds of millions in size. I'm pretty sure that cutting down intermediate jobs will pay for itself down the line even if the market is only a few percent of their overall share.

The world being huge IS the problem

Drone delivery only works if you have nodal warehouses in the city in which you want to deploy the service. This goes against the little trick Bezos used to make Amazon work in the first place; it introduces additional overhead for a service that is only used by a fraction of all Amazon customers, and can only be applied to a fraction of the inventory Amazon ships and sells.

[MP-Ryan]

You guys are wasting a topic of infinite humorous potential on a discussion of feasibility and technology.  I am severely disappointed.

[Kolgena]

I'd rather have my merchandise delivered to me via ICBM

[The E]

I'd rather have my merchandise delivered to me via ICBM

Actually a more practical thing than microdrones

[Luis Dias]

I'll leave the humour with you, MP, you are doing a top job at it!

The world being huge IS the problem

Drone delivery only works if you have nodal warehouses in the city in which you want to deploy the service. This goes against the little trick Bezos used to make Amazon work in the first place; it introduces additional overhead for a service that is only used by a fraction of all Amazon customers, and can only be applied to a fraction of the inventory Amazon ships and sells.

Again, you are misplacing the usage of your intelligence here. You are really smart but I think you are thinking on the wrong problems (and the wrong ideas, there are certain things you are missing out and I'll get to them in a minute!).

However, I will entertain your questions. I think this "overhead" will pay itself out in the middle term very easily. Let's make a case study. Let's take the really pessimistic case that San Francisco city is really different than the rest of the world, and while the rest of the world stays in StatusQuoLand, SF will try out this tech. Let's also assume only 1% of Amazon's clients in SF will desire this utility.

Let's also assume SF has 1.000.000 clients for Amazon. This is probably on the really low end figure (I'm counting the whole city + suburbia). 1% is ten thousand clients. These clients will be offered service by a small helipad on their huge warehouses near San Francisco and a shifting number of 'copters (built as needed). That's the whole overhead we are talking here. A robot delivers the package to the copter, the copter picks it up and delivers it from a small helipad. The rest of the service continues as it has ever continued in the past.

The thing I said you are missing here is the 30 minute window and its importance in "impulse buying". If you can really get the buying time down to a 30 minute windowframe, the selling opportunities are really big. Also coming, renting. You need stuff right now badly. You have your phone, use the amazon app to buy/rent some important "thing", in 30 minutes you get it at your GPS location. This is a whole new market that opens up.

The technicalities may well "fail" on the safe side here, and the more I think about it, the more impressed I am with the idea.

The dangers (drones) are also real. So I think the real discussion is not "if", but "when" and "what then".

[Luis Dias]

double post with the basic info.

the 60 minutes bit:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazons-jeff-bezos-looks-to-the-future/

[Phantom Hoover]

initially i was thinking military-spec uavs with books attached to little parachutes, since then this has all been one long disappointment

[Aardwolf]

I like it. Kinda.        I haven't read the article

RE: surveillance: just make it so it only has enough memory to buffer maybe 1s of video, and give it a low enough transmission rate it can't send any kind of useful-res video back home. Make those hardware limitations, and it can't even be hacked to be a surveillance platform. Then if something happens to it, use GPS tracking to investigate.

RE: technical stuff: give it solar power, rechargeable batteries, and maybe even a small wind turbine, and you could have it 'roost' to recover energy between legs of the trip. But... what about rain? You don't want your package getting rained on, but to fully enclose a package...

[MP-Ryan]

Some quick Googling indicates this project is technically infeasible anyway; level 2A ballistic protection (body armour) weights about 1 lb per square foot of protection.  Assuming dimensions of 30 cm x 30 cm x 30 cm, that's 2.72 kilograms of ballistic protection to armour the drones.

Given that they only have a payload capacity of 2.3 kg, it seems they have a choice:  armour them so they can't fly, or let them fly unarmoured and be used as a more challenging version of a clay pigeon

(If you can't beat the technical non-humour, subvert it...)

[StarSlayer]

Pfft.  Come on MP, you need to think bigger and grander.  Like programming a flock of your own quad rotors to intercept and steal packages from Amazon's.    

I mean think of it, you literally have the chance for true air to air piracy and want to waste it on skeet shooting.

[MP-Ryan]

I mean think of it, you literally have the chance for true air to air piracy and want to waste it on skeet shooting.

One of my coworkers coined the term 'octoskeet' after reading the article; it remains to be seen whether he meant the skeet shooting of octocopters, or the launching of octopus from skeet launchers and subsequent shooting competition at conventional ranges.

To be honest, either sounds funny as hell to watch =)

Though another new hobby occurs to me - reversing the tilt alignment of exactly half the rotors on the octocopters...

[Klaustrophobia]

there's a third possibility there.....

[Mongoose]

Well, on the plus side, now I can get my animu DVDs almost immediately.  On the minus side, I give them two weeks until they go all Skynet on our asses.

[MP-Ryan]

Well, on the plus side, now I can get my animu DVDs almost immediately.  On the minus side, I give them two weeks until they go all Skynet on our asses.

...assuming StarSlayer and his drone army aren't interested in them of course =)

[StarSlayer]

I'm like a terribly nerdy Don Karnage.

[Mongoose]

I'm like a terribly nerdy Don Karnage.

That is the best reference of all time.

[S-99]

For a range of 10 miles for delivering packages less than 5 pounds. Why not have amazon deliverers on bicycle? For this 10 mile range, a human could deliver more packages on a bicycle simply by being able to carry more than one parcel. I'm only saying this because the range isn't that big, and it would open up a new line of employment for amazon on the bottom of the pay scale. Think newspaper delivery, but with parcels.

[Luis Dias]

That's the thing, S, they want to get rid of precisely that "human" thing riding the bycicle.

[666maslo666]

Well, it could be viable. If the only thing required is cost of electricity to power the drone then it can be cheaper than traditional deliveries. But we cant be sure until it is tried in reality.

There will be plenty of customers for such a service, Id consider it too if it wasnt too expensive over normal deliveries, and the limited range may not be prohibitive if the warehouse is situated in a city.

I doubt people are going to complain too much about the drones. These are private drones for legitimate purposes, not military or police ones. The cool factor alone will outweight most of anti-drone paranoia. I am sure shooting down these drones or otherwise tampering with them is illegal.

One issue I see is danger that lots of drones can possess. What if it falls on someones head or into traffic? What about the spinning blades? Is this regulated in some way and if not, shouldnt it be?

[The E]

There will be plenty of customers for such a service, Id consider it too if it wasnt too expensive over normal deliveries, and the limited range may not be prohibitive if the warehouse is situated in a city.

Which requires warehouses in the cities, of course. Warehouses, and the staff to run them, are expensive.

I doubt people are going to complain too much about the drones. These are private drones for legitimate purposes, not military or police ones. The cool factor alone will outweight most of anti-drone paranoia. I am sure shooting down these drones or otherwise tampering with them is illegal.

I think you are underestimating the anti-drone sentiment going around these days. Even if there is no organized political resistance against this, all it takes is a guy with a moderately powerful gun to bring one of these things down.

Sure, shooting at these things is a valid offense, you are after all destroying someone else's property, but policing this is kinda hard.

One issue I see is danger that lots of drones can possess. What if it falls on someones head or into traffic? What about the spinning blades? Is this regulated in some way and if not, shouldnt it be?

That's actually not that big a deal. Octocopters are very spindly, their weight distributed over a large area, and mostly plastic, carbon fiber, and aluminium. Having one crash into traffic would not be that dangerous because of the direct damage the impact would cause, but because of the driver being startled.